RiseUp - Live Joy Your Way Kamini Wood

When we set boundaries, a side effect or a thought that can pop into our heads could be that we’re giving up or walking away from something important, but that couldn’t be further from the truth! When you set boundaries, you’re not forcing someone to ‘stop’ or you’re not ‘giving up’ and resigning, you’re reinforcing what you will or will not tolerate. If that person refuses to listen, then that’s when you know what that person really thinks about you and your needs! 
 
It is completely okay to walk away from something that doesn’t serve you or respects your boundaries. Walking away from something toxic is not a sign of weakness! You shouldn’t have to ‘push through’ the pain in order to feel worthy, loveable, or whole. When people disrespect your boundaries, it says everything about them and not you. 
 
If you’ve ever felt selfish for having boundaries, take a moment to reframe and realign yourself. It’s actually self-ful to have boundaries and standards to how you want others to treat you. If something doesn’t work for you anymore, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to back out and walk away from it. It is okay to change your mind or even say no when things don’t feel right for you. 
 
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Today, let’s talk about conflict! Sometimes, when we do not want to confront something, our people-pleasing traits get activated so that we can move through the discomfort as quickly and as less confrontational as possible. Conflict is scary! 
 
However, it’s important to train ourselves that conflict isn’t always so bad. If we avoid conflict, then we also avoid the opportunity for growth and further connection with that individual. Conflict does have its purpose and we need to reframe how we interact with it. 
 
So, what does healthy conflict look like? If you and the other person are in a disagreement, turn on your active listening skills. It’s important that you sit to listen and hear the other person, and not just hear them to response and deflect as quickly as possible. 
 
Another key aspect to healthy communication is when we have the ability to use ‘I’ statements instead of general ‘you’ statements. When you use the word ‘I’, you unlock a very powerful tool that helps address the root of your problem and feelings without putting the other person on the defensive. 



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Kamini works with a lot of high-functioners and over-givers, and without realizing it, they’re typically primed for covert emotional abuse. This is because whenever something goes wrong, they can feel so, so responsible for the problem and like it was their doing all along. All it takes is to be around someone who doesn’t have the best intentions, and these high-funciones are off to the races with self-doubt and they end up validating someone else’s bad treatment and behavior. 
 
We have to start naming things out loud so that it becomes more normalized and you can also recognize the signs a lot quicker. Covert emotional abuse can sound like very strong words when it can be applied to your partner, your boss, or even a family member, but we need this type of language so that we can begin to work through it, walk away from it, and heal from it. 
 
Covert emotional abuse isn’t that visible for most people because it’s so subtle. It is often a collection of emotional abuse instances that make it covert. For example, one siloed incident in itself could very well be innocent. However, if there is a collection of emotional abuse patterns, no matter how quiet it may seem, that’s when you need to perk you ears up and start paying attention to the collective signs of what this external person might be saying to you or doing to you. 



Now, let’s 
 
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Conscious parenting has been making the rounds on social media and whenever it shows up on your feed, there are typically comments below saying that we are raising a soft generation. Is this true? As a parent of five children, Kamini shares her perspective as to why conscious parenting should be the status quo and status norm for how to raise emotionally stable and regulated children. 
 
Kamini is a wiser parent today than she was 22 years ago when she had her first child. Now, upon reflection, she 100% agrees with her children that she treats the youngest (15) completely differently than the way the others were raised, but hey, that’s part of growth and development as a parent. We have to be willing to look at our own actions and see where we can be better; for the sake of our children. 
 
Now, let’s talk about parenting styles. Snowplow parenting is a parenting style where the parent will typically remove all sorts of obstacles and challenges out of their child’s way so as to not hurt them or provide them with setbacks. This allows the child to complete a task successfully without many challenges, and it gives them a bit of encouragement and hope for tasks they might already be feeling insecure about. Although it sounds great in practice, this can set up your child for long-term failure and inability to handle adversity. 



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With so much information going on in the world, we can feel like we are never able to take a break. This can lead us to have a mental fog that disrupts our clarity. The biggest thing we have to pay attention to is what is taking our energy away from the meaningful things in our lives.
 
We might be familiar with the external distractions that occur in everyday life. This could be a co-worker stopping by to talk to you in the middle of an intense work focus session, social media notifications, or even family members calling you, or you watching TV. However, very rarely do we pay attention to the internal distractions and thoughts we might be having that cause us to not be focused.
 
Limiting beliefs about ourselves, internal anxiety that we might have, and the constant overthinking of possible scenarios, might be another example of internal distractions. We might take these thoughts for granted because we live it, and think it, every single day, but it should not be normalized to have these internal criticisms or chatter in our heads.
 
These thoughts cause us to doubt ourselves when we should be trusting in our inner self. This is one of the main reasons why you might be experiencing anxiety or a lack of mental clarity/direction. We have a tendency to focus on the external, but we should also look inward and try to analyze/feel what distractions our brain uses to soothe us.
 
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So many myths get spread across social media, news articles, etc around the topic of anxiety. We like to think that anxiety is only a ‘me’ problem and that we are somehow flawed. The biggest myth that still gets pushed today is that anxiety isn’t a ‘real’ or that it isn’t a very common problem, but that couldn’t be further from the truth!
 
We all experience anxiety in some shape or form. Granted, some of us experience it a lot worse than others. You should never feel like you’re alone in this journey because millions of people also suffer from this phenomenon. Anxiety, to break it down in its purest form, is the feeling that you’re not going to be okay. That ‘nothing’ is okay.
 
People believe that anxiety has no benefit and therefore needs to be eliminated or ignored. This isn’t the best approach either. When you try to push down your feelings of anxiety and lack of control, unfortunately, the mind finds a way to manifest and worry even more! There is such a thing as ‘the right’ amount of anxiety.
 
Anxiety is part of the human experience. You are not a flawed person if you experience panic attacks or have your anxiety running away with your imagination. These are real things people go through regularly! It’s just about being mindful and managing your expectations around the event or situation that might be causing an anxiety trigger.
 
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